RXwildlife Sightings

SOS outing Saturday 29th March 2008

Late March isn’t the best time for birds in the Country Park Local Nature Reserve, and some areas were too exposed to the strong southerly winds, so the group of 8 concentrated on the Quarry and sheltered gills where birds could be more easily located by sound and then watched in comfort.

Even without too many birds, there’s plenty to see at Hastings Country Park in terms of the extensive management work aimed at enriching the terrain for wildlife. We looked at areas which have been scraped to expose sand for invertebrates and reptiles, at enclosures formerly dominated by Bracken, now grazed by Highland Cattle, at rough grassland grazed by Exmoor ponies and at the huge strips of birdfood which have been so successful at sustaining winter populations of buntings (no sign of them, of course). Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the still cold wind, a search of sheltered spots at Lime Kiln found a range of active invertebrates. The door and window frames and wood piles held several immature Zebra Jumping Spider (below) cruising for prey, while the longer grass held numerous Nursery Web Spider and one or two Crab Spiders, the latter presenting quite a sinister aspect with their long spiny fore legs spead wide in anticipation of some hapless fly. Several hoverflies are on the wing at the moment including the familiar Drone Fly and Marmalade Hoverfly, while something of a surprise was a Common Bee-fly feeding on Polyanthus. As the name suggests, this is the commonest species of Bee-fly in Britain as a whole, though in the Rye Harbour area records of this species are outnumbered by those of the Dotted Bee-fly (see here), nationally a much rarer species.